Darksiders may be the most intriguing title released this year, even this early on. It combines classic action-adventure style gameplay with an exceptional story and dialog, all while molding it for today's audience. True, such a feat is gargantuan, and developer Vigil Games didn't hit all the notes they wished to play. Nevertheless, Darksides was a pleasure to play.
It was a pleasure for several reasons, most importantly because it's perhaps the most wonderfully written game of it's genre, at least in this generation. Making a comic-book plot out of the Four Horsemen noted in the Bible's book of Revelations, we play as War, a generic yet humble and intelligent hero, two traits rarely seen in today's protagonists.
Those readers with a romantic side, a side which enjoys honor, duty, and not the norm of today's angst-filled teenagers or vampire/zombie humor will find that Darksiders is incredible. Not a single line of dialog is poorly done; the writing is stupendous, the acting is magnificent, and the plot, especially compared to so many of today's videogames, is wonderful.
It's these things that make the bad parts so much more bearable. The biggest fault of Darksiders is repetition; every little thing done in the game must be repeated at least once, whether it's going through the map again to find newly required items or the fact that there's only one real combat combination attack. It was undoubtedly never intended to be a mutton-masher, yet gameplay turned into a pissing match for who get's bored of killing identical enemies over and over again.
Indeed, there is more than one attack, though the simplest attack is also the most powerful, and it's likely that players will only use three/four attack variations on purpose. New attacks can be purchased, but most only add to the combination, such as changing it halfway to a 180 turn attack. Attacks cannot become more powerful through in-store purchases, a move I appluad, though after twelve hours of gameplay, I failed to completely power one of my three weapons completely, and failed to power either of the other two at all. Experience takes far too long to earn, and combat is too repetitive to do it.
Generic enemies become far too common. There are actually many different enemy types, from armored angels to fire demons, though they all are as brainless as the remains of the human population, zombies. Enemies are all easy once players master the controls, though because combat becomes dull so quickly, I found myself enjoying the larger, more difficult enemies because they at least posed some challenge. Boss fights are likewise far too easy once the singular strategy to defeat them is found; all enemies completely lack any sense of AI, so combat feels like hitting a punching bag and avoiding it on the way back.
The entire store system is broken. Players can purchase weapon upgrades and items, but most items proved useless. Through the course of the game, I never once needed to use any health- or magic-restoring items, mostly because of the lenient respawn system, which respawns with full health and magic fairly close to the spot of death. Darksiders autosaves so often that it has an almost identical respawn issue as Bioshock did, only here, it actually reloads the last autosave with full health.
As mentioned, weapon upgrades don't actually make the weapons stronger, instead giving them greater range. Even most of the magic abilities were unnecessary, as I ended up using only one, and rarely because it consumed so much magic that it wasn't really worth it. Finally, items in the store are so expensive that, while most aren't even necessary, it's almost impossible to buy all the items unless you plan on spending at least 30 hours in the game, which is at least double the time it takes to complete the campaign.
Darksiders does its best to take after franchises like Zelda, though perhaps it should have been more like God of War and Devil May Cry for combat. The weakness in combat makes this a hard game to recommend for anyone who isn't a completionist. For those of you who must find every nook and crany in a game, this will prove to be very worth your while.
The Lowdown
7.5
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, Darksiders isn't a bad game, but a very mediocre game with some of the best, cleanest, clearest writing ever witnessed in a videogame. It's sad that this exceptional work is tarnished by mediocrity, though the ending makes it clear that Darksiders has a future. Considering how exceptional the story is, and how I was nearly content to carry on playing to reach the next cutscene, I will await the next chapter with glee and fond memories. It won't be hard to forget the bad, but the good? It's memorable like Half-Life is.
Half Life meets Web of Shadows…wait, what?
I have no idea how you can rationally associate Half-Life with this game. You only mention it once as an after thought at the end of your review. As for Web of Shadows you never even mention it except in the title.
The way your title is now you could be inadvertantly accused for black hat SEO practices.
[Reply]
David Reply:
January 25th, 2010 at 9:54 PM
Indeed. There is no mention of Half-Life until the final sentence. The title should incorporate the “meat” of the game. The article was decent, but it focuses too much on the negatives and not on the positives.
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